Category: Reviews
Mors Vincit Omnia: A Spotlight On Sentient Ruin Laboratories, Part 2
“Dear Friends…” Or so begin the always welcome mailing list updates from Sentient Ruin Laboratories with news on upcoming releases, sales, and the usual kind of information one would expect from an independent record label. …
Pulver – Kings Under The Sand Review
Even the cryptic album title Kings Under the Sand can’t throw the listener off the scent of this one. These German jerks are talking about dead pharaohs. I mean, those are the kings buried under …
Arch / Matheos – Winter Ethereal Review
Sympathetic Resonance is now rightly viewed as a classic of progressive heavy metal. It delivered the promise of the Twist of Fate EP and completed the comeback of one of prog’s most important duos: Fates …
Lord Vicar – The Black Powder Review
[Artwork: “Death Crowning Innocence” — George Frederic Watts, 1886] Books are wonderful. Actual books that have weight and paper pages with ink that reveal truths and theories to be studied and assimilated, or that build …
Vultures Vengeance – The Knightlore Review
Because I’m clearly a paragon of awesomeness, I keep a Page-A-Day calendar on my desk. Tragically, this year, my go-to choices of 365 consecutive Grumpy Cat memes or a year’s supply of terrible Dad Jokes …
Monasterium – Church of Bones Review
Doom (the genre not the game or the [amazing] punk band) is having something of a resurgence in 2019. Perhaps “resurgence” is the wrong word. Doom, of the clean vocal variety, has existed since before …
Skullsmasher – Rocket Hammer Brain Surgery Review
[Cover art by Lucas Korte] Grind persists. Last year was one of my favorite grind years, giving us the devastating full length by Axis of Despair, a new Cripple Bastards, Terrorizer and Needful Things, and …
Chevalier – Destiny Calls Review
Let’s take a moment, if we may, to talk about the “ah-ha” moment. That moment when all of a sudden, an album just clicks. Sometimes it comes right away, sometimes after two or three listens, …